


The Crown Prince

by Anam_Writes



Series: the things you can't read aloud at the war table [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Married Sex, Minor Angst, Wedding Fluff, Wedding Night, Weddings, Wyverns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:35:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23959297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anam_Writes/pseuds/Anam_Writes
Summary: “I present to you, Queen-Consort to Almyra’s throne, Lady of Derdriu, The Enlightened One, Queen of the Dawn, my dearest friend and now, until forevermore, my wife,” his smile is too wide and dazzling for Byleth to resist smiling back as he waves for the gift to be set at her feet. “My wedding gift.”The staff steps back and the warm looking blanket falls onto the laid grass. Byleth blinks back the red glow of light she had not expected leans in, enthralled by the orb before her. The guests from the west let out a trail of ohs and ahs. The guests of the east gasp, for they better recognize what the King has done.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: the things you can't read aloud at the war table [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684297
Comments: 24
Kudos: 221
Collections: The Golden Gifts - Claudeleth Fic/Art Exchange





	The Crown Prince

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radicaldar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radicaldar/gifts).



> This is a gift for [Dar](https://twitter.com/dar_alt) for the Golden Gift exchange!
> 
> I hope you love it as much as I loved working on it. I tried my best to keep the story as light and fluffy as I could manage....with a bit of angst. Just a bit. As a little treat. And because I have no self control.

Their wedding - their real wedding - was a day Byleth would never forget. Though their rings already were tailored and worn, though they had shared their marriage bed and been allowed to call each other wife and husband months before, it had not felt real. 

Byleth had been tied into a corset she felt unaccustomed to, bound in heavy fabric and bathed in such acidic floral scents she had needed Claude to massage away her migraine when they retired for the night. 

They had been wed, then, in a sea of faces ranging from inoffensive smiles she did not recognize to poorly hidden distaste. Seteth had bade them vow their fealty to one another by the Goddess' name. They did, though the vague existence of what they knew to be the Goddess meant little to either. They made oaths as a King to a Queen and a Queen to a King. Then they kissed for a length considered neither too long nor too short - appropriate. 

It was dispassionate and political. 

But now, set up in lavish royal tents, far from any pomposity, they could be wed properly. On the western plains of Almyra with the Throat a blue shadow on the horizon, Seteth asked if Claude and Byleth would take one another as husband and wife. 

The reception was lively. Drink flowed like water. Food of both the eastern Fódlan and Almyran variety stacked high on plates to be whittled down throughout the night. 

Byleth was allowed to wear the white, airy dress she had chosen for herself: tied at the waist, train short, neckline plunging. 

Claude was allowed to dress in garb as mish mashed of both his countries as he pleased. A kamarbandh wrapped around a Fódlan ceremonial military coat worn with breathable loose fit pants and leather heeled riding boots.

They sat on a blanket together, lying back against plush pillows and covered by a sheer canopy through which they could see blurred starlight. Kisses and sweet nothings could be exchanged freely as music and laughter roared around the fire before them. 

When the gifting part of the reception feast began, Claude squeezed Byleth's hand and offered her a wide grin. 

Lorenz brought them poetry books - the priceless and ancient sort. Marianne and Hilda gifted them matching sets of jewel strings to braid into their hair. 

"Once your hair is long enough to braid again, that is," Hilda teased the king, tugging on the ends of his curly mop, still in the awkward phase between short and shoulder length. 

Ignatz gave a painting, a landscape at dawn as seen from their favourite spot at the Goddess tower. Seteth a compiled book of folktales for any little ones. Leonie a quiver for Claude and a sheath for Byleth. 

Claude's parents, Darius and Tiana, gave them a quilt of assorted fabrics from provinces across Almyra and territories across Fódlan. 

“I patched them all together myself,” Darius boasted. “Sewing is the best way to keep an archer’s fingers limber, you know.”

“He’s lying,” Claude whispered too loud, obviously intending for his father to hear. “Weaving is better.”

“Hey!” Darius boomed. “I’ll not have you filling the girl’s head with nonsense, boy. She's to raise my grandchildren to be great archers. How can she do that if she has you in her ear telling her lies about the loom?”

When the gifting was coming to a close, Claude layed a drawn out kiss to Byleth’s lips and rose. His cup of mulled wine raised to the sky, he called for all eyes on his bride. 

“The most stunning, inspiring, intelligent commander to ever take to the field of battle,” he proclaimed of her. “And in Almyra that kind of skill and valour demands a place of honour upon a steed of equal power and beauty to Her Majesty.”

A thunderous roll of sound came from the ceremonial war drums along the borders of the feast. It was then, as servants stepped forth holding a piece of weaved cloth bundled around something, that Byleth realized her husband must have been planning this little speech for a while. 

“I present to you, Queen-Consort to Almyra’s throne, Lady of Derdriu, The Enlightened One, Queen of the Dawn, my dearest friend and now, until forevermore, my wife,” his smile is too wide and dazzling for Byleth to resist smiling back as he waves for the gift to be set at her feet. “My wedding gift.”

The staff steps back and the warm looking blanket falls onto the laid grass. Byleth blinks back the red glow of light she had not expected leans in, enthralled by the orb before her. The guests from the west let out a trail of ohs and ahs. The guests of the east gasp, for they better recognize what the King has done. 

What differentiates the elite Barbarossa from the average rider in their country is the nature of the relationship between the warrior and the steed. Anyone can ride a tamed, trained wyvern. Few can raise a creature by hand from birth to be as wild and free as nature intended and still maintain the bond that keeps them loyal to their partner. 

Claude was giving Byleth a chance to win the first trial of the Barbarossa and prove herself a warrior worthy of one of the most honoured titles in their kingdom. 

When Byleth looked up - gazed upon him and saw the flame burning in his eyes, even with the bonfire at his back casting his face in shadow - she knew she could pass this trial. 

…

They were a mess of limbs that night, stumbling over each other into downy pillows, plush wool blankets and thick pelts. They made quick work of their clothes and Byleth soon worshipped at skin glowing warm and golden in the candle light. 

She pressed eager kisses down the trail of his abdomen before Claude took her by the chin, brought her lips to his. 

"I don't think I have the patience for that at all," he told her. 

She smiled when she went to him. He murmured sweetness into her shoulder and brought her to her back. 

He was as warm water above her and she felt herself submerged in him. They were all warm love and the encouraging slip of tongue and skin. 

When he brought her up high enough to see where her peak lay she felt him slip from her. 

"Mind if I get a bit rougher?" He asked, husky in her ear. 

"Please."

He bore her down, belly in the fur. Two hands raised Byleth’s hips to meet his and before she knew it they were set to a less merciful tempo. 

She was sure the slap of skin and the carrying of their voices would carry over flat, empty earth with little to hinder them. People would know tomorrow when they woke what they’d been up to. But, then again, it was their wedding night - their real wedding night - and the last had gone so disastrously. They would have known anyways. 

So Byleth decides to ride through it. Let her husband take her where he may; she would follow. 

Just as she had made that decision, as she had come to accept whatever knowing looks and congratulations she got from friends tomorrow, her eyes caught on a glint at the corner of the royal tent. 

Red.

“Stop.” 

Byleth pushed up, gathering fur around herself to retrieve some semblance of decency in front of the glowing egg. 

“Is something the matter?” Her husband asked. “Did I hurt you?”

Claude clung to her, making no move to get back to things. His brow was furrowed and the creasing at his eyes told her she may have caused him some undue worry.

“No,” Byleth rearranged the blankets so that they fell over his lap, tenting him. It was better, though not by very much, she’d admit. “But they shouldn’t be seeing this.”

Claude’s eyes followed her own and as it all clicked into place he laughed. “The egg?”

She nodded. 

“Starlight, the egg can’t see us. It has no eyes,” he assured her. “Or ears. It’s so early on it doesn’t even have a complete nervous system. There’s no need to worry.”

“It feels wrong,” Byleth said, picturing the little life inside it. “They’re so small, so helpless, so mine.”

“I’m yours,” he dropped pitch, nipping at her ear and bringing her back down to lie with him.

She curled into him. “Not tonight. I feel like I’m being watched.”

“At least I know you like them,” Claude sighed, hand running up and down Byleth’s spine as they lay cozy beneath the furs later that night. 

She had wrapped the red egg up warmly in their new quilt and had been watching it from her place tucked into Claude’s side all night long. The red glow from the orb that looked like a frosted ruby ebbed and flowed with what Claude told her was the baby’s heartbeat. She could see the outline of the little wyvern’s shadow curled comfortably around themself. 

“I love them.”

Claude adjusted, his chest moving beneath her head. She knew instinctively, without so much as a glance, that he was preening. 

“I’m glad,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “What do you intend to name them?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Byleth said, pensively running her fingers through the trim curls on her husband’s chest. “I think I’ll have to meet them first.”

…

“What about Jeralt?” Claude suggested one day. 

Byleth was sitting by the fire, huddled in blankets and winter cloaks. She was sweating through her white tunic, to be sure. Ugly sweat patches were no doubt forming about the folds beneath her arms, her breast and about her tummy. She’d have to launder it heavily. 

It was necessary, however, as the egg sat in her lap and needed to be kept warm. 

She cut short her humming of old Faerghus folk tunes to the egg to answer him. “I said I wanted that name for our firstborn.”

“And will this little one not be born first?” Claude huffed.

Byleth sighed, accepting a glass of water from him as he came to sit with them.

“Claude thinks he’s funny,” Byleth told the egg. “But you must remember that he is not, no matter how he tries to trick you into believing he is.”

“Your partner is so mean!” Claude pouted to the unborn wyvern. Byleth swatted away his hand as he attempted to stroke the egg in her lap. “Hard as nails, aren’t you, love?”

They sat like that a moment, Claude sipping on a chilled tea smelling of pine and lemon. Byleth gulped her water down in a great flash that would have made even Rahpael give pause. 

That’s when a thought came to mind. 

“You didn’t raise your partner, Magali,” Byleth said. “Yet you’re a Barbarossa. How is that?”

Claude frowned for the briefest of moments. “You remember the great brown wyvern I rode? The one who passed at Gronder Field?”

Byleth recalled the shriek of the creature when the arrow struck between scale plates at his chest. 

"Bacchus was his name?" 

"Yes," Claude nodded. "I was raised alongside him my whole life. We were born under the same moon and it's tradition for the heir to be a Barbarossa. I couldn't bring him with me when I left for Derdriu but once I had the Dukedom it was all clear skies for us. Three years apart was hard but we made it through."

"I never knew," Byleth's voice nearly cracked. The sad smile on his face told him that lack of knowledge had been by design. Just keep smiling, he had once told her. "How did you manage a Barbarossa's bond with Magali?"

"She was Bacchus' Queen," Claude said. A shadow passed over fond eyes, both mourning and quietly intimate. "They were the active breeding pair of the royal clutch. Wyverns mate for life, you see. If she wasn't delivered the body she would never have moved past the death. She and I just...we clicked after that. She followed me home over the throat and the rest is history."

"Even now," Byleth held the egg closer to her chest, feeling the light thrumming of the glowing, heated pulse. "Even having never met them...I can tell how awful it would be to be parted like that."

"Well, it's peace time," Claude smiled. "Hopefully neither of you will have to see war again."

"We'll have to have lots of hunts and mock battles to keep things interesting for us, then," she said. "They're a lively one. I can tell already."

…

Byleth held the egg, as she had for months, in a wrap slung over her shoulder. It was tucked tight into her torso. Some foreign emissaries had mistaken her for pregnant and asked when she expected her heir. 

“Soon,” she’d smiled, adjusting the sling so her guests could see the shadow of fully formed jaws inlaid with baby teeth gnawing endlessly at nothing beneath glowing red. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

The emissaries jumped, squealed and grasped at each other. 

When Petra - dear, wonderful, brave, wise Petra - had come to see the newlyweds after having missed their wedding to be crowned Queen in Brigid, Byleth pulled the same trick. 

She smiled sweetly, gave Byleth a nod and turned immediately to Claude. 

“Your child is not normal,” She said. 

It was on a day such as that , egg cradled against her, on a stroll through the gardens, that she heard a crack and watched fluid overrun the fabric of her sling.

Claude had shown her how to do this. He said it would be simple enough - certainly easier that all came before and after. If the egg was kept warm, clean and undisturbed, the hatchling should be able to tear itself out healthy and happy all on it’s own as a primal internal code demanded it do. If not…

She could not think about if nots.

Byleth knelt, laying the egg down in the green grass and watched a tiny nose break through. Red scale caught her eye, ruddier than the egg. Deep onyx eyes set in the red head poked through. 

"Welcome," Byleth said, smiling. 

The hatchling blinked and trilled joyously. And she realizes it must be well. It would not have the strength to raise its head, or make such a solid noise. 

"You're so good at this," she encouraged. They used dull claws to crash through the remainder of the shell. She felt the creature vibrate as it fell into her lap. "What a fighter."

Byleth wrapped the newborn in the wrap that smelled of his egg and her own warmth. She carried him up to the royal apartments in the family's private wing and started the fire. 

"Get the fish from my stock pile, please," she asked a maid passing outside the door. "And tell the King we have a new addition to the family”

“Is there a name I should give His Majesty?” The maid asks, cooing as the little wyvern clicks curiously at her head poking through the doorway. 

“Valiahd,” she smiles, knowing Claude will recognize the word in his native tongue.

She could now welcome to the world her little “first born” prince.


End file.
